Affordable Care?

[Siro]

Babe, I share your view on a system that is clearly hijacked by corporate interests along with legislative authorities advancing their own interest at the expense of everyone else. However, I am having a difficult time precisely understanding your objections as you do not define the terms you're using, making them sound a bit empty. You seem to support the idea of organized labor and other socialist principles, but you use word socialism as if it's a taboo. You keep bringing up freedom and liberty, but you seem to mostly relate it to personal income.

More importantly, you continue to bring up the typical conservative complaints against people abusing the system, or claims of government inefficiency. Both complaints were addressed in this thread several times, including the article that I linked, and which you concluded to be factual.

As the article mentions, government run programs like medicare are far and away the most efficient healthcare programs in the U.S. by any conceivable measure. And fraud is so incredibly rare (compared to private systems) due to the resources invested in fraud prevention, that it's barely worth mentioning. Sure people will sometimes make unneeded visits to doctors and hospitals, but that again seems to relate simply to your central theme of personal control of one's income being the most transcendent moral prerogative.

And remember, the U.S. is not the only country on earth. Government run healthcare works elsewhere. Other countries still manage to advance medicine and provide good care to their citizens. Without bankrupting their economies. There are the typical complaints about supposed long lines and what have you, but I'll take that over millions of people who cannot get healthcare at all, and millions more who are forever enslaved due to their bills. And so should anyone who mentioned humans right as often as you do. How can someone so compassionate be so focused on controlling every last penny earned?

 

[babe]

Babe, I share your view on a system that is clearly hijacked by corporate interests along with legislative authorities advancing their own interest at the expense of everyone else. However, I am having a difficult time precisely understanding your objections as you do not define the terms you're using, making them sound a bit empty. You seem to support the idea of organized labor and other socialist principles, but you use word socialism as if it's a taboo. You keep bringing up freedom and liberty, but you seem to mostly relate it to personal income.

More importantly, you continue to bring up the typical conservative complaints against people abusing the system, or claims of government inefficiency. Both complaints were addressed in this thread several times, including the article that I linked, and which you concluded to be factual.

As the article mentions, government run programs like medicare are far and away the most efficient healthcare programs in the U.S. by any conceivable measure. And fraud is so incredibly rare (compared to private systems) due to the resources invested in fraud prevention, that it's barely worth mentioning. Sure people will sometimes make unneeded visits to doctors and hospitals, but that again seems to relate simply to your central theme of personal control of one's income being the most transcendent moral prerogative.

And remember, the U.S. is not the only country on earth. Government run healthcare works elsewhere. Other countries still manage to advance medicine and provide good care to their citizens. Without bankrupting their economies. There are the typical complaints about supposed long lines and what have you, but I'll take that over millions of people who cannot get healthcare at all, and millions more who are forever enslaved due to their bills. And so should anyone who mentioned humans right as often as you do. How can someone so compassionate be so focused on controlling every last penny earned?

well, it appears we come from different worlds and speak different languages, and have all our own meanigs for what we say, to the exclusion of being understandable to the chimps. . . . .and a lot of others.

I read your question above as a stylized liberal rant that could be the "reasonable" interpretation of a totally-immersed believer in the fare commonly available in the TIME magazine, and public education as offered today, and our media. OK, fair enough. What should I expect?

It is going to take some effort to bridge the gaps here. . . . and I will work on it in small bits, if possible. . . .

You ask me how someone like me, whom you compliment as "so compassionate", be so focused on controlling every last penny earned?

Well, I was employed for about fifteen years by the government whose hand I am biting now, working as a student and graduate in publicly-funded research. Maybe my views have something to do with the way I saw that money being spent, and how that system works.

My wife is a health care professional in the caregiving side, and a lot of my views come from things she says about the practical effects of insurance policies, litigation, and government mandates and requirements. My list of abuses comes from her. And she has been a compassionate caregiver for all her adult life.

It is my general sense that people, if they have the power of choice, can make decisions that are in their own interests more efficiently than any larger system even one staffed by the best of professionals, and I want people to have that power in their own lives.

Not that I would really want a world where people in need go without care, nor that I really think private charities can or will do it all for the poor or those simply unable to pay for necessary and obviously beneficial care. I pay taxes and I just want the money spent in a way that efficiently provides the care, and does not create a whole caste of fatcats living off the system who don't care about anything but their cash cow.

 

[Siro]

well, it appears we come from different worlds and speak different languages, and have all our own meanigs for what we say, to the exclusion of being understandable to the chimps. . . . .and a lot of others.

I read your question above as a stylized liberal rant that could be the "reasonable" interpretation of a totally-immersed believer in the fare commonly available in the TIME magazine, and public education as offered today, and our media. OK, fair enough. What should I expect?

It is going to take some effort to bridge the gaps here. . . . and I will work on it in small bits, if possible. . . .

You ask me how someone like me, whom you compliment as "so compassionate", be so focused on controlling every last penny earned?

Well, I was employed for about fifteen years by the government whose hand I am biting now, working as a student and graduate in publicly-funded research. Maybe my views have something to do with the way I saw that money being spent, and how that system works.

My wife is a health care professional in the caregiving side, and a lot of my views come from things she says about the practical effects of insurance policies, litigation, and government mandates and requirements. My list of abuses comes from her. And she has been a compassionate caregiver for all her adult life.

It is my general sense that people, if they have the power of choice, can make decisions that are in their own interests more efficiently than any larger system even one staffed by the best of professionals, and I want people to have that power in their own lives.

Not that I would really want a world where people in need go without care, nor that I really think private charities can or will do it all for the poor or those simply unable to pay for necessary and obviously beneficial care. I pay taxes and I just want the money spent in a way that efficiently provides the care, and does not create a whole caste of fatcats living off the system who don't care about anything but their cash cow.

I do not see what is "liberal" about my post. Perhaps the last part about socialized healthcare working fairly well in other countries? I'm simply pointing out that your views on efficiency and abuse is not consistent with reality. Your justification is built upon vague sentiment like liberty and individual rights. So what are we talking about here? Are we talking about the best ways to actually improve healthcare in meaningful and measurable ways? Or about how to change it without violating the deeply ideological personal-income-centric worldview? I am more than willing to engage in a philosophical discussion about The Good and how it related to freedom and its many ephemeral definitions, but that's neither here nor there.

This conversation seems to be about fixing healthcare. Healthcare is astonishingly expensive for everyone involved (private sector, government, individuals). An astounding number of people cannot afford it at all, and those who can are often left bankrupt after a serious illness. In addition, the quality of healthcare does not seem up to the standards of most developed countries. There is a good chance one contracts a worse ailment from hospital care than the one s/he was admitted with. There is no logical reason why any of this should be, and other countries seem to do it better. The system is way too entrenched to borrow someone else's system whole. But like you say, Obamacare fixes nothing, and so we must look into other models and use the data to develop something that works for us.

But that must be based on the best solution to the problem, as long as any demands on the tax payer are reasonable. If there are inherent inefficiencies in large scale solutions, then we must find solution to the solutions. Progress is an on going process. And there is no one-size fits all ideological solution that we should impose on ourselves.

 

[One Brow]

And this is what's wrong with it. The money is collected from the taxpayers, and used to promote things deemed "beneficial" by bureaucrats, whose jobs are on the line not in any sense of duty to the public, but to corporate cartelists with their influence on the direction of "progress".
...
Just like the way we were cut out of the deal in the ACA, it's never been "our" game at all.

The scientists I read say the allocation of funds is done by scientists, not bureaucrats.

However, I do agree with the last sentence.

 

[One Brow]

https://www.nber.org/papers/w14970

Thank you, I'll look it over. However, I'm not sure why there would be a significant effect in only three years.

 

[babe]

I do not see what is "liberal" about my post. Perhaps the last part about socialized healthcare working fairly well in other countries? I'm simply pointing out that your views on efficiency and abuse is not consistent with reality. Your justification is built upon vague sentiment like liberty and individual rights. So what are we talking about here? Are we talking about the best ways to actually improve healthcare in meaningful and measurable ways? Or about how to change it without violating the deeply ideological personal-income-centric worldview? I am more than willing to engage in a philosophical discussion about The Good and how it related to freedom and its many ephemeral definitions, but that's neither here nor there.

This conversation seems to be about fixing healthcare. Healthcare is astonishingly expensive for everyone involved (private sector, government, individuals). An astounding number of people cannot afford it at all, and those who can are often left bankrupt after a serious illness. In addition, the quality of healthcare does not seem up to the standards of most developed countries. There is a good chance one contracts a worse ailment from hospital care than the one s/he was admitted with. There is no logical reason why any of this should be, and other countries seem to do it better. The system is way too entrenched to borrow someone else's system whole. But like you say, Obamacare fixes nothing, and so we must look into other models and use the data to develop something that works for us.

But that must be based on the best solution to the problem, as long as any demands on the tax payer are reasonable. If there are inherent inefficiencies in large scale solutions, then we must find solution to the solutions. Progress is an on going process. And there is no one-size fits all ideological solution that we should impose on ourselves.

substantial comments here. . . . . not sure I can briefly line up all the things you mention that I feel are actually valid, and to counter the ones I think are not perfectly valid, in a substantiative way, would probably deserve a thirty page research report like the ones NBER produces. We have to subscribe to that service or satisfy ourselves with "abstracts" of the studies. Might be worthwhile to subscribe. If I could just get elected to office somehow, I'd get it for free. . . . .

yes, when you seem to imply that my whole reason for wanting to quibble over the ACA is because I'm simply stingy somehow, I read that as "liberal" takedown of a perceived "conservative". Like Obama saying Republicans want to throw Grandma under the Bus, and such.

No, I felt like the ACA was a huge powergrab by the cartelists and such. I see the rules still being defined, and the whole process going on essentially out of the public view, and I want to question this method of doing public business.

 

[PearlWatson]

The lack of federal numbers is not evidence that the federal numbers were an improvement over numbers seen in various states. It certainly is not an argument regarding distribution of pension sizes and other known retirement incomes.

Gobbledygook.

I don't think you could pull out a percentage high enough that would actually justify the government forcing redistribution on ALL of us in the name of "retirement" income for "the elderly poor."

 

[babe]

Gobbledygook.

I don't think you could pull out a percentage high enough that would actually justify the government forcing redistribution on ALL of us in the name of "retirement" income for "the elderly poor."

you didn't understand the context of OB comment. It actually made sense to me, and had a valid point. We were talking about the effectiveness of private/local programs to care for the elderly and/or poor before the implementation of OAA under the New Deal, and the effectiveness of federal money spent to "fill in the gaps" for those who needed care after the New Deal program known as OAA. OB is not certain we have valid stats, even with the study we were discussing, on the basis of the short time span in the study.

 

[PearlWatson]

you didn't understand the context of OB comment. It actually made sense to me, and had a valid point. We were talking about the effectiveness of private/local programs to care for the elderly and/or poor before the implementation of OAA under the New Deal, and the effectiveness of federal money spent to "fill in the gaps" for those who needed care after the New Deal program known as OAA. OB is not certain we have valid stats, even with the study we were discussing, on the basis of the short time span in the study.

Okay, I appreciate the graciousness you show to all. I guess I'm just bored of minutia.

For me it comes down to the principal that government should do nothing economically for a people that they could do for themselves. It doesn't matter how affordable, efficient, or convenient it seems to allow government interference it is still not "affordable" in other realms.

I came upon this de Tocqueville quote I feel covers the dangers of the paternalistic welfare state being advanced through this legislation:

After having thus successfully taken each member of the community it its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government is the shepherd.

 

[jazzyB]

But anyhow Govt and other welfare organizations should look forward to provide the affordable care to all of people. So, that they could live a better life with in their earning. As some of the countries are providing better care facilities at some reasonable prices.